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The GAO found that the State Department is addressing challenges at the new bureau tied to role definitions and hiring.
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Top cyber diplomat Nate Fick says the State Department is on track to have a diplomat trained in tech issues in every embassy.
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The announcement comes after years of back-and-forth between Congress and multiple presidential administrations about consolidating how the department handles cyber diplomacy.
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The Commerce Department released a rule Wednesday aimed at stopping offensive cybersecurity tools made in the U.S. from falling into the hands of countries that use such software undermine human rights or national security. The new rule requires U.S. companies to obtain a license from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security before selling hacking tools to the governments and individuals in countries of national security concern, including China and Russia. Sales of defensive cybersecurity software are largely exempt from the rule. Technologies covered by the new rule include spyware and tools designed to carry out nefarious tasks, such as malicious trojans. “The United States is committed to working with our multilateral partners to deter the spread of certain technologies that can be used for malicious activities that threaten cybersecurity and human rights,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement. The new rule, which will take effect in […]
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President Joe Biden said he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, from energy to water, that should not be the subject of malicious cyber activity during a meeting between the two men in Geneva on Wednesday. The two heads of state also agreed to task cybersecurity experts from each government “to work on specific understandings about what’s off limits and to follow up on specific [cyber incidents] that originate in either of our countries,” Biden said at press conference after a roughly four-hour meeting with Putin. “I talked about the proposition that certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to attack, period, by cyber or any other means,” Biden said. It was not immediately clear if the list of critical infrastructure sectors that Biden referenced corresponds with the 16 sectors designated by the U.S. government. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to […]
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The House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would carve out a top cyber diplomacy office at the State Department to help the U.S. better influence global cyberspace norms. The so-called Cyber Diplomacy Act would require the State Department to develop a strategy for promoting norms in cyberspace around what behavior is acceptable in cyberspace. The proposal would also create an ambassador role for cyber diplomacy as well as a centralized bureau, the Bureau of International Cyberspace Policy, to push democratic norms in cyberspace and advise the Secretary of State on cyber issues. “In an increasingly connected world, we must have the proper structures in place to promote our values and interests in cyberspace,” Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who co-led the bill’s introduction, said in a statement. Added co-sponsor Jim Langevin, D-R.I.: “As the United States confronts increasingly bold challenges from adversaries in cyberspace, designing and implementing a […]
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Ransomware gangs are making a killing — they’re encrypting data at schools and hospitals around the world at an alarming rate, and they’re raking in hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth doing it, by some counts. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Security experts and former diplomats are in the early stages urging governments to work together to create a different kind of world — one with fewer examples of hackers taking data hostage or knocking organizations offline to demand ransoms or extortion fees, and one in which hackers are held accountable for targeting vulnerable organizations. Government officials increasingly have been working together to tamp down on malicious cyber activity in recent years, as evidenced by a European Union sanctions regime focused on hacking rolled out in the past year, and a 2015 agreement among United Nations members that cyberattacks intended to damage critical infrastructure are off limits. But […]
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Diplomats from around the world are convening this week to share ideas about what type of behavior should be allowed in cyberspace, and debate what happens when those rules are broken. The virtual confab, organized by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and designed for seasoned and green diplomats alike, began Tuesday morning to discuss how international law applies in cyberspace and different attack methods diplomats may encounter when confronting cyber incidents, Estonia’s Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar told CyberScoop in an interview. While the gathering will touch on historical cyber incidents that have rocked the international norms conversation over the years, including the sweeping WannaCry and NotPetya attacks, the focus of the so-called cyber diplomacy school is not on instruction about the technical details of cyber incidents. It’s about how to negotiate and shape behavior of other governments. “This is not technical training,” Tiirma-Klaar said. “What is […]
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Add the prefix “cyber” to any concept common in geopolitics — diplomacy, norms and so on — and the resulting phrase immediately becomes less precise than its parts. The latest example is “truce,” courtesy of none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin didn’t use “cyber truce” in a statement Friday that called for the U.S. and Russia to create “a comprehensive program of practical measures to reboot our relations in the field of security in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).” But the term fits. The former KGB agent’s proposal was otherwise broad and vague. He mentioned nothing about Russia’s well-documented misdeeds in cyberspace, and he made no accusations about what the U.S. might be doing in response. The White House dismissed Putin’s proposal in a statement to the New York Times, and Russia-watchers expressed the usual caution. Russia is interfering in our elections today, at this moment, […]
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Israel and the United Arab Emirates say they are collaborating to track and block cyberthreats in a region where hacking remains rampant. For two countries that have invested heavily in offensive hacking tools in recent years, it’s a recognition that collective defense could be more effective than going it alone. The cooperation, which officials are touting just weeks after the countries normalized diplomatic relations, involves spotting hacking threats that could affect both countries and exchanging intelligence among government cybersecurity experts. “We are threatened by the same threats…because of the nature of the region because of the new relationship and because of who we are — strong economically and technologically,” Yigal Unna, head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, said during a webinar Thursday with his counterpart, the UAE’s Mohamed al-Kuwaiti. The two men stressed the importance of trading threat data, and floated the idea of joint cyberdefense exercises. They did not single out any foreign governments as […]
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